Biden-Xi tête-à-tête raise hopes for better ties

President Biden held a phone call with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping late last week; only their second since Biden took office, in an attempt initiated by the US to stabilize the bilateral relationship and engage Beijing more substantially amid deepening competition.

The world’s two largest economies have been locked in a standoff fueled by festering disagreements on issues including trade, technology and human rights. That — and a global coronavirus pandemic blocking most international travel — has diminished communication and cooperation between Washington and Beijing. When elephants fight, the ants get trampled. The world has watched aghast that the two giants have engaged in a verbal duel, when the duo could have cooperated with each other in resolving the grave issues threatening humanity.

Till August 31, Biden was engrossed in the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan. The messy egress has lowered his approval ratings both at home and abroad. Now that Afghanistan is behind them, White House considered it prudent to reach out to Beijing amidst the animosity initiated during the rule of President Trump. Some analysts opine that the American business community has pressurised Washington DC to mend fences with China.

A contingent of Wall Street veterans — including John Thornton, the chairman of Barrick Gold Corp. and a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. veteran — push to improve ties. A survey released last week by the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that three-quarters of those who participated complained that trade war measures were hurting their operations.

Statements released by Washington DC and Beijing following the 90-minute tête-à-tête were similar. The White House stated that Biden and Xi “had a broad, strategic discussion in which they discussed areas where our interests converge, and areas where our interests, values, and perspectives diverge. They agreed to engage on both sets of issues openly and straightforwardly.”

China’s outlook on the top level telecom echoed the sentiments expressed by the US, except that Beijing proffered a more conciliatory, hopeful tone than previous stated rhetoric has done in the past year and ended with a pledge to keep up “in-depth communication between the leaders of China and the US.” Additionally, Beijing stated that the world’s destiny depends on whether China and the US can manage their relations well. “Bilateral cooperation would benefit the world; confrontation would bring disasters. The US-China relationship is not a multiple-answer question of whether we should have good relations, but a compulsory question of how,” was the view from Beijing.

The leaders of the US and China agreed to manage the growing rivalry between two leading economies of the world to stop it from devolving into conflict — a pledge seen as raising prospects for talks as both nations face pressure to improve ties.

Beijing said Xi called for courage to put China-US ties back on track, because confrontation would mean only suffering for the world. “[Maintaining a good relationship between China and the US] is a question of the century to which the two countries must provide a good answer ... Getting the relationship right is not an option, but something we must do and must do well,” the Chinese foreign ministry quoted Xi as saying.

Earlier this year, in March, when senior officials from both the U.S. and China met at a halfway point in Alaska, the discussion morphed into an angry exchange of words. Both sides traded sharply worded rhetoric which did not yield any results.

Officials from both countries have had talks in the past, but without apparent results. And wrangling over protocol has prevented high-level military contact. Biden and Xi are both expected to take part in the Group of 20 meeting in Rome next month, although there has been speculation that Xi might not attend in person. Chinese and US leaders have traditionally held a bilateral summit on the sidelines of the meeting, but it’s unclear if that will happen this year.

A senior Biden administration official said the idea for Thursday’s call was born of frustration with a perceived unwillingness on the part of lower-level Chinese officials to “engage in serious or substantive conversations.”

The official said Biden initiated the call with Xi “to really have a broad and strategic discussion about how to manage the competition between the United States and China.”“It’s quite likely that engagement at the leader level is really what’s needed to move the ball forward,” the official said.

After months of little progress in US-China relations, Joe Biden’s frustration led him to initiate a call with Xi Jinping in search of a breakthrough. Now the question is who will be first to take concrete action.

The Biden administration has said the US welcomes competition with China but wants to cooperate in areas of common interest, like climate change. Chinese officials say it is unrealistic for the US to expect cooperation while also taking steps that are detrimental to China’s interests.

China is of the opinion that cooperation on tackling environment and climate change can take place if the key issues, which remain a bone of contention, are tackled first. Beijing has outlined its demands including lifting all sanctions, removing punitive tariffs, revoking visa bans, ending export restrictions of high-tech items and withdrawing an extradition request for Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co. Washington persists in blaming China for the onset of COVID-19 and incessantly launches a tirade of accusations in Beijing’s handling of the Uighurs in Xinjiang.

The Japan Times, in its Op-Ed on the marathon telecom has summed it up in its title: ‘Biden-Xi phone call raises key question: Who will blink first?’

Both Biden and Xi owe it to posterity to shelve their differences and unite in meeting the challenges of combating COVID-19, climate change, growing poverty, hunger and unemployment head on. Many analysts opine that the call could lead to more substantive engagement and serve as a “turning point” that leads to trade talks or restarting a strategic dialogue frozen under the Trump administration.